Practical thoughts about software

A While back I worked on a big enterprise platform/project where we did not have much experience using NHibernate. I was learning it in the process of writing the code and for the framework and everything looked peachy. I even sometimes found ways to optimize my code to make it 10+ times faster. Like having a session-per-request so the I wouldn’t open a transaction every time I make a query to the database(if you don’t know – transactions – very expensive).

One of the problems I think now was the notion that we were not creating an application but a platform, and then we were going to make applications on top of it. So we worked a couple of months without a client and then we began making a project for a client but we decided to ship it when it was fully ready. So for a long time we had no real input of how the system was working(we had no info if it’s slow or fast or if it had production problems).

Naturally I became a fan of Ayende because of all the awesome features of NHibernate that he posted in his blog and that were buried deep down in the NHibernate code.

Then one day I found Ayende’s NHibernate Profiler. If you don’t know what it is – it’s an application that connects to NHibernate’s logs and analyzes them. It shows you common and not so common pitfalls you have in your application. If you’re using NHibernate and not using NHibernate profiler – you’re doing it wrong.

So when I ran NHibernate profiler I was Like WOW! I was astonished by the number of problems we had in the application. SELECT N+1, not using paging almost everywhere etc.

So what was the real problem in this situation? We worked with objects. We didn’t know or didn’t gave a real thought about what really happens underneath NHibernate. How the queries are made and what happens in the DB with those queries. We didn’t give a thought about the data access. After all – we have abstracted it away, haven’t we?

I left that company a while back and now I’m not using NHibernate that much(because the infrastructure in the company I work for is not using NHibernate not that I don’t like it - I think it’s awesome actually). I had forgot about this story until I saw the recent announcement of Umbraco’s decision to stop the development of their new version of the CMS. At first I didn’t quite understand why they did this. They said something about their architecture being flawed on the Keynote event in which they announced their decision. They said also that the development team’s lack of experience with NHibernate was the part of the problem and that they shouldn't have made the new version ‘in the dark’ - away from the community(away from the customers). After that I read the review Ayende did on Umbraco’s new version. And guess what? It was like a Daja Vu. Yea maybe the business was different and the applications were different and the logics and teams and decisions were different but the root cause was the same. They didn’t thought about the data access.

And now we get to the point of this article. NHibernate is a gun. It gives you power and freedom to do all kinds of things. So if you see it for the first time or/and don’t know how to use it – you could easily point it in the wrong direction – like to your head – and you can shoot yourself with it. But if you know what NHibernate is and what it does and know what you’re doing and use it right. It will keep you safe and sound from the dangers of the jungle.